


Night Light

by AdhdBarryAllen



Series: Green Light [3]
Category: Birds of Prey (Comic), DCU, Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Green Lantern Zinda Blake, Light Angst, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wizard of Oz References, sometimes family is two husbands their lesbian best friend and a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 05:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12764310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdhdBarryAllen/pseuds/AdhdBarryAllen
Summary: Zinda can't sleep. She's not the only one.





	Night Light

**Author's Note:**

> this ties in with green light but i didnt think i was going to be able to work it in to a chapter. if youre reading this without having read the main fic, all you need to know is that zinda blake is a green lantern, her and guy were bros in the 90s (thank you guy garnder: warrior issues #24, 29, 36, 38-43), and she lives with guy and kyle.

It’s nearly always the same dream. The Blackhawks dying in front of her eyes on again and again as Janos tells her how she could have saved them. She could have saved them, if only she had _been_ there. Those are the nights that smoke fills her lungs and the smell of burning engines sears itself into her nostrils as she watches her friends drop from the sky like rainfall. The nights Zinda dies in their place are a reprieve.

Tonight was different.

She’s grown used to dreams of her long dead teammates, but she’s never ready on the nights Killer Shark comes for her. He lords over her, tying her down and whispering nothings that are anything but sweet. He reeks of old blood and the sea, a smell she’d tried hard to forget but could never quite rid herself of. Sharp teeth graze her pulse. He _owns_ her. Hands tighten around her throat. She struggles, kicking and trying to scream, but she can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t—

“ _Z-Zinda,”_ a woman gasps. “ _You’re hurting me.”_

But she isn’t Zinda, is she? She’s Queen Killer Shark, just like _he_ wanted her to be.

She looks down at her hands, finding Helena’s neck between. Helena chokes and sputters, sharp nails clawing at Zinda’s arms. _Let go let go let go!_ She watches from outside of herself, begging her hands to _stop_ , but her grip is locked as she squeezes the life out of the woman she’s loved.

Helena goes limp.

Zinda wakes with a shout.

She tosses off the comforter, which had suddenly become a stifling prison, and sits on the edge of the bed. Her blonde hair falls in her face as she struggles to calm her breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth, count to ten. It’s the same every time. Slowly, her ragged breaths return to something a little less panicked, almost normal.

She takes the spare hair tie on her bedside table, putting her hair up in a unskilled bun. On the way to the bathroom across the hall, Zinda grabs the knitted shawl Guy made for her birthday and pulls it tight around her. It’s not cold out—far from it, actually—but the sweat on the back of her neck has cooled and a deep chill has settled into her bones.

In the bathroom, Zinda doesn’t reach for the lightswitch. She already knows what she looks like after a nightmare: face pale, eyes hollow, deep shadow-like bruises under her eyes. The sound of running water fills the room and she sighs as she splashes some on her face. It’s the third time this week she’s woken up like this.

“Take your self pity and _shove it,_ ” she whispers to her reflection.

Knowing there’s no hope of her faling asleep again, Zinda leaves the bathroom behind and heads to the living room. It’s still dark out; the house is quiet except for the low sounds of the television. A single lamp is turned on, accentuating the shadows of the house.

Zinda finds Kyle on the floor, back against the unoccupied couch as he sketches something dark and monstrous with one hand and reaches into a bowl of popcorn with the other. She knows from experience how easily he startles when he’s drawing so she tries to gentle, but he still jumps slightly when she sits down next to him. Kyle nearly knocks over the popcorn in an effort to hide his sketchbook.

“Sorry, sorry, didn’t hear you come in,” Kyle stutters.

Zinda smiles softly; he seems to relax at that. “Nightmare?”

Kyle nods. He still sees that sharp, unnatural smile when he shuts his eyes. And the screams of the people he loves as that _thing_ uses his body to tear them apart… It keeps him up more nights than he cares to admit.

“Parallax,” he says quietly.

“Killer Shark.”

Kyle offers her part of his blanket and they don’t say much after that; It’s much too late to talk about their feelings. Instead, Zinda turns her attention to the movie Kyle has put in. _The Wizard of Oz_ . She still remembers the first time she watched it. It was pouring rain on a day there should have been sunshine, and she’d just arrived back in Gotham for her leave from the army. She’d ducked inside the theater to dodge the downpour with no intention of seeing a film, but had ended up in the back row of the theater as Dorothy's house landed on the Wicked Witch. In that theater, she could forget that the world was on the eve of war. Zinda found it so _easy_ to lose herself in the Emerald City with those around her. That bright, fantastical world was enough to give _anyone_ hope.

Now, the movie means so much more to her than hope. The Wizard of Oz is one of the few films from her time that people still watch and remember. As Zinda watches, she doesn’t just see Dorothy on the yellow brick road. She sees a lost girl, not unlike herself, so far from home and unsure if she can ever return. She too found herself in a strange new world once, but unlike The Wizard of Oz, Zinda knew from the start she could never go home. The world never asked her if she wanted to change, it simply expected her to. Despite the unfairness of it all, Zinda has made her peace. She’s _had_ to.

There’s a shuffling of steps behind her. She looks up to see Guy, standing in his slippers and holding their huge orange cat, Warrior.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” he asks, rubbing an eye. Kyle and Zinda both shake their head no.

Guy doesn’t tell them about his nightmare; Zinda suspects he hadn’t gotten to sleep at all. He joins them on the floor, wiggling himself between the two. Warrior sniffs at the popcorn experimentally until Kyle pulls him away. They instinctively lean into Guy, Kyle slotting his head on his shoulder and Zinda curling up against his thigh. Guy presses a kiss to Kyle’s hair and Kyle sighs, content.

The three of them might be a trio of sleepless disasters, but they get by. They take comfort in each other’s warmth, watching Wizard of Oz as the sun rises in the distance. They don’t need to say a thing—the company is enough. It’s nice. It’s _perfect_.

(They wake to the static of the television in a tangle of aching limbs. It’s too warm and too late in the morning, but it’s the best sleep any of them have had in a long time.)

**Author's Note:**

> so cas and i were talking... like we do..... and then i wrote this lmao. they're all sleepless disasters and i love them so much?? and i finally get to write about warrior the cat!! kyle found him eating their garbage and brought him home like "look guy isn't he cute?? i named him warrior he reminds me of you!!" he's the grumpiest orange fluff ball he's great. sadly, cas and i came up with all that after i wrote the first few chapters of green light. also... a cute and sad headcanon..... kyle is really soft around zinda cause she kinda reminds him of his mom cries  
> anyways please let me know what you think <3


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